Wednesday, June 15, 2011

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."

-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

This is exactly the point I wanted to make in my english paper this year. Too bad I had yet to find a $2 copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the dollar aisle of Target to find the quote that would say it how I meant it. Not that I think it's really a fault, but I've always believed that beautiful things are there to be beautiful. Not critiqued to unearth something ugly beneath.

In Jessica Kerwin Jenkin's Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, she includes l'art pour l'art, or art for art's sake. She quotes the American painter John McNeill Whistler saying...

"'Art should be independent of all claptrap,' Whistler proclaimed, 'should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.'"

a r c h i v e s

credit please and thank you!

i try my hardest to give credit where it is due, but if you spot something un-credited or miscredited, contact me! and I would love to make the correction! also, if you share anything of mine, please give some credit back to me!thank you!hello.ohsorosie@gmail.com